The present invention relates to a device for crushing metal cans, particularly for crushing cylindrical aluminum-alloy cans for beverages or the like.
An important known environmental problem resides in the disposal of waste consisting, in many cases, of the containers used to package products.
Most of this waste, if adequately collected and segregated according to the material of which it is made, could be recycled almost entirely at low cost, thereby allowing reduced exploitation of natural resources which leads to economic and environmental advantages.
This is certainly the case of cans used to contain beverages or the like. These cans, which are commercially very popular, are in fact generally made of an aluminum alloy, particularly suitable for food-related use, which has a high cost for its extraction from the raw material and can conversely be recycled at low cost.
The main problem that has so far hindered the large-scale recycling of cans for beverages or the like is mainly due to the difficulties arising from the segregated collection of this kind of waste.
Special containers for collecting aluminum waste have long been used for this purpose, but due to the low weight-volume ratio of these products, such containers must have a considerable capacity to make can collection economically convenient. On the other hand there is also the problem of the placement of these containers, which due to their bulk can create environmental impact problems that are difficult to solve.
Containers equipped with a press that crushes the cans beforehand so as to reduce their volume are also known. In this case, the relatively high cost of these devices has limited their widespread use.